


Stop Caring

by ToshiChan



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mentions of violence and rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-22
Updated: 2017-05-22
Packaged: 2018-11-03 12:46:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10967535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ToshiChan/pseuds/ToshiChan
Summary: Stop caring, the world cries. He finds he can't.





	Stop Caring

From birth, he’s been raised to care. To clasp his hands together and pray for the needy and poor, for those less fortunate than he is. To pour every ounce of his body into caring for God. Raised to care correctly of course though, because there are some who cannot be cared for. Cannot care for the sinners, they say. Cannot find room in your heart for the guilty.

Nicholas is guilty. He is awash with it. Guilt and sin drip from his body when he showers but it’s never enough. He can’t cleanse himself. He’s tainted in the stuff, he’s become it. A priest once said during a drawn out sermon, that if there is something in your life distracting you from Jesus and religion, then you should cut it out before it gets worse. Remove it like it’s a tumour and leave it oozing blood on the floor until the pain finally stops and you’re able to move on. Apparently there’s only enough room in your heart for the lord, and you shouldn’t try to cram more in. You should just discard it like it never meant anything to you in the first place. 

He cannot remove this sin though, cannot take away this thing that draws his attention from the lord, and from his family. His eyes flicker over people, note down the things he likes, he starts to crush. His cheeks flame at certain sights and his heart stutters in his chest. This is all normal, his parents say when he tells them what he’s going through. One day he will have a beautiful wife and adorable children to raise like they raised him. It is an honour, they say. A gift. 

It’s wrong though, it’s wrong and they’re wrong and everything is just so fucking wrong because he likes the wrong gender. He’s never going to have a beautiful wife. His eyes flicker over sharp jaw lines and strong muscles. He glances away from soft curves and the gentle swell of breasts. He looks to stubble and ruffled hair, tight and poised, ready to fight and fight. He cares too much, he finds, but he cares for something he shouldn’t.

Stupidly, in the belief that Jesus forgives all sinners, he tells his parents about what he is, who he was born as. They care, he tells himself. They care for Nicholas, they care for the boy that is him. They would never turn their backs on him, for he is the adorable child they raised. They tucked him into bed until he was ten, and decided he was too old for it. They held him when he cried, until it was decided he was too old for that as well. Their decisions shaped his life and now he wants to decide something for himself. 

He tells them, and they stop caring. 

That, or they care too much. Care for the wrong reasons. They shouldn’t care that he is gay, homosexual, homoromantic, a faggot, a pouf, a fucking freak. They do care though, they care so much that it hurts. His mother cries, his father storms and he finds himself drowning in the wind and water they whip up together. They argue about what to do, they pray for him, as if a few sharp words will stop him caring for boys, boys, boys. They act as though a few kind words will set him straight, back on the path of girls, girls, girls. 

They send him away, to a place that cares like they do. A place that confuses kindness with cruelty, swaps love for hate and oozes depression. A place where he cannot care for the people he loves, unless they are deemed right by the higher authority. Why should the higher authority tell him who to love? What about the people higher than them, better than them? What do they say? Did they even bother to ask Jesus what he thought, before they spoke for him and his father?

Nicky finds himself turning away from religion, at the same time that he apparently turns back. He pretends. He pretends not to care, and he pretends to care. He’s cured, he tells his parents on the day he returns. He’s all better. The tears come at this, but his parents think it’s relief, relief that he’s better, that he’s not sick anymore. Nicky knows better though. The tears come because it’d the biggest lie he’s ever told in his entire life and the words hurt his throat and rip at his tongue.

He doesn’t talk much after that.

He gets girlfriends, and pretends to care for them. They are religious, good girls that his mother coos over and his father encourages him to bring round more. He kisses them softly, fleetingly, using catholic laws to stop himself from having to go further. He hates letting his hands settle on their hips, where their soft flesh is warm and smooth. Bile rises in his throat when their lips brush. Hatred runs through his blood, but all he can do is submit.

He hates having to care.

Nicky is at the end of his rope, he realises. His face is red and raw from scrubbing at his mouth after those horrible dates. His nails are chewed into nonexistence, he’s losing weight and he still can’t stop caring for the wrong people. He watches gay protests on TV in secret, and longs to be among them with his own rainbow flag, partner at his arm. He cares so much it hurts.

He decides to kill himself. 

He’ll go to hell, because he was never able to get rid of his sin, nor even of his beliefs, sickening as they were. When the thought to end it all enters his mind for the first time, he throws up, spilling his guts out, and then spilling his sadness on top of it. Still, it’s all he can think about. He eyes the knife block in the kitchen, stares thoughtfully at the prescription medication for his father’s bad knee. He watches cars whizz by, and stares up, up, up at tall buildings that beckon for him to climb, climb, climb.

The problem is that he cares. The problem is that he doesn’t care.

Nicky cares for Eric, from the moment their eyes meet. This is the man who can save him. This is the man who has a body built for caring, not matter the person, no matter the thing. Sending him to Germany is the best thing his parents have ever done, and he cries when he thanks them, because sending them to ‘Gay Camp’ was the worst thing they’ve ever done. It ruined him. He flinches at the sight of churches, feels sick whenever he hears the odd scripture read out. His beloved cross is a noose that Eric helps remove, slowly, gently, like he might break.

He’s already broken though, and Eric is the one to put him back together. 

Or maybe they both do. Maybe the pick up the pieces together because puzzles are never fun unless someone is at your side.

He cares for Eric, he loves Eric, and that’s all that matters. After all their time together, he isn’t afraid to tell his parents that yes, he still cares, cares for boys no matter what they taught him. They try to send him back, back to the camp, and he can’t go back, he can’t, he can’t, he can’t. Eric steps in, holds him close and his parents can’t touch him anymore.   
Nicky can care again, and he can care for the right people. Eric is solid beneath him, he’s real and Nicky can cling to that. 

He cares for his cousins, the twins, in his own way, despite what people tell him. They’re fucked up, they’re dead men walking, you’re doomed to be chasing after people who just keep running away. Nicky keeps running though, even though he knows it’s the truth. Andrew and Aaron are untouchable to Nicky and it hurts when they find new people. It hurts when Aaron begins to chase after Katelyn until he’s so far out of reach that he almost can’t run anymore. 

It hurts when Andrew finds Neil.

Neil hurts Nicky, and not in the way anyone else ever has. Neil doesn’t hit Nicky, or ignore him (most of the time) or act like his very existence is something wrong and disgusting. Neil isn’t like that, Neil could never be like that. 

Neil hurts Nicky be existing, by not allowing himself to care, and then caring too much. He gets hurt, he gets slashed up and burnt and Nicky throws up time and time again at the sight of the scars that the team see more and more of over the year. Just the mere existence of someone who refused to give up, who never let the thought of ending his life enter his mind, hurts Nicky. Compared to Neil, Nicky is a coward. 

Whenever he gets to see Eric, those rare, rare times where he gets to cling to his partner and just care…he cries. He cries for Seth and Allison and Dan and Matt and Renae. He cries for Kevin who tries to pretend nothing bothers him and fails every time. He cries for Neil who never wanted to live such a painful life and yet he’s still living it every day. He cries for Aaron who slips further and further away no matter how close Nicky tries to hold him. He cries for Andrew, the cousin he couldn’t save. Eric holds him close and rocks him back and forth and lets him care, lets him overflow with love that has nowhere else to go, because most of the people he loves just won’t accept it.

It hurts. It hurts so much but he keeps smiling and caring and playing and fighting. The scars build up, slowly at first and then quickly, but they’re not visible. They’re the scars that come from taking Andrew back to his home and letting him get hurt. They’re the scars that come from the fact that Aaron had to kill a man to protect his brother and it was all Nicky’s fault. They’re scars that appeared after kissing Neil when he obviously didn’t want it, scars from provoking his friends again and again and being so foreign with the seniors. Eric begs him to stop doing this to himself, only Nicky can’t do that. He has to keep going.

The pain keeps building up over the years, but Nicky wishes that it wouldn’t. He shouldn’t feel pain when Andrew was the one that was raped, when Aaron was hit constantly by his mother and ended up killing someone. He shouldn’t feel pain when Neil is struggling to stay alive, fighting and clawing at the life the world had served him. He doesn’t deserve pain. He can only care. 

Stop caring, the world cries. He finds he can’t.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has been sitting in my fanfiction for ages. It's been edited a lot because I don't tend to write in the style it's in. I hope you enjoyed it nonetheless. Drop a comment or kudo if you feel like it. It'd mean a lot. : )
> 
> (Also just so you know I have no severe hatred against religions, specifically that of Christianity and Catholicism.)


End file.
